Adani ‘interested’ to invest in metro projects in Uttar Pradesh

The Adani Groupand IL&FS are among the few companies which have shown interest in investing in Metro rail projects in Kanpur, Agra and Meerut.

Principal secretary, urban planning and textiles, Mukul Singhal said that both companies had expressed interest, primarily in Agra and Kanpur public-private partnership (PPP) Metro projects and that the government was in talks with them.

“We are expecting investments of Rs 1,500 crore in the field of infrastructure development, but if even one Metro projects goes under PPP, we are looking at an investment of Rs 15,000 crore for a single project. There are some two to three companies that are seriously considering the projects and are doing their due diligence at present. In the talks we have had so far with IL&FS and the Adani Group, we have primarily discussed the Kanpur and Agra Metro projects,” he said.

Having released a textile policy for the state, Singhal said that a further investment of Rs 5,000 crore was being expected in the textile industry. “These are also only from big industries. We are not even counting the smaller industries in textile so far. Our focus so far is to promote garmenting, technical textiles, yarn spinning and to promote meetings between buyers and sellers. We have already received a proposal for setting up a textile park along the Yamuna Expressway at an investment of Rs 5,000 crore,” said Singhal.

He said that specific interest has been expressed in investing around Varanasi, Gorakhpur and Lucknow. Other possible projects with investments of Rs 50 crore of more include units for sanitary napkins, knitted fabrics and spinning in Gorakhpur, and spinning and weaving in Ghaziabad.

Policy has benefits for units: Min

Textile units are usually labour intensive and we are looking at increasing employment through this sector. The government is targeting one lakh jobs in five years through this,” said Singhal.

He pointed out that while there was no source for primary raw material in UP, especially since cotton is not being farmed in the state, industries would move to whichever state where they received benefits like refund of GST. “The textile policy specifies benefits that will be given to units, especially those that set up in Purvanchal and Bundelkhand,” Singhal added.